Goodbye, New Moon
by smalltown something
Summary: What happens when a hero is forgotten? Well, she meets a boy.


**- author's note ;;** My first fanfiction. My power was out, and I decided to write something. I just recently started reading some Inuyasha fanfictions, and realized I had never written one. So, here's my hand at it. I don't know where the idea came from, but it seemed interesting to delve into slightly. Feel free to read, and review - I hope to get some kind of feedback on if I should try my hand at Inuyasha fanfictions, or any fanfictions, again. Enjoy!

**- summary ;;**What happens if the hero is forgotten? Well, she meets a young boy.

_g o o d b y e, new moon._

Everyone is but a sum of their moments. Every flash of memory that brings them to another place - good, or bad, that is what defines each and every footstep that has graced this earth. No matter how faint the mark left behind, no matter how faded it became with time - it was there. Hidden in the metallic jungle that was slowly spilling into the vast forests and empty oceans. More and more people were leaving their mark in pavement, no longer pressing feet to the torn earth - digging toes into the dirt to make sure someone would know they had been there. Young children weren't sitting in their parents laps listening to those moments - they were engrossed in their video games and television. Their minds conquered by the advancement of time - no longer content to listen to stories of how things _used_ to be. Everything was fast and moving - loud and meaningless.

This is a story about a young boy, Saito.

The dark-blue Honda Civic was pulling away - leaving the young boy to shuffle his feet as his eyes looked down at the screen of the Playstation portable in his hands, buttons hit with the grace of someone who had spent the majority of their time hitting them. His light brown eyes seemed to not pay any attention of where those red converse were bringing him, he had made this walk a number of times - but his father seemed to think it was important that he spent time at his uncle's side. A howl of wind pulled through his hair, rustling the short ruffled light blonde, almost white strands. He had never met the dark haired man who was apparently related to him - rather, he had never had a conversation with him. He had been in a coma since before Saito was borne, and the doctor's said he would never wake up - he didn't like the hospital. It smelled like dying people.

Very rarely did Saito actually make it up to the floor his uncle was on - usually spending the few hours in the cafeteria spending the money his father had given him to get something to eat until he could be picked up. But today, something was pulling him to take the elevator up to the third floor, his video game held in his hands - still blinking with life, and chirping out annoying pixilated sounds that were going to drive the nursing staff insane. The door yawned open and admitted him to a floor that made him scrunch up his nose - this was the floor of everyone who would live out their days at the hospital. Shoes scuffled the floor while he was making his way past the nurses station and into the dark room that was his uncle's room.

His father never turned on the lights, always keeping the blinds closed - and the nurses took this as a request and always kept the room in some kind of darkness. They thought the proud man cried whenever he sat in the darkness at his brother's side - half of them didn't even remember the night the patient had been transferred in. Saito pulled up a chair to the side of the bed, leaning over the unmoving body of his apparent relative - he always wanted to pull back an eyelid to see what colour eyes he had, but he always refrained. It would have upset his father. With a huff, he slumped into his chair and began playing his video game once more - eyes focused, feet swaying.

"Hello?" A female voice.

He ignored it, if the woman wanted someone - one of the nurses would eventually tend to her. After all, he was on level nineteen - which was virtually unheard of!

"Hello?" Again.

Saito actually looked up, to see if any of the nurses had heard the woman. They glanced into the room next door, but didn't move - just continued on with their conversations.

"Hello? Anyone?" Desperate.

He seemed to huff, the good person inside of him clawed for action, and with that he slid off his chair and walked out of the room. The nurses didn't pay any attention to him as he slowly rounded the bend to look into the room - to spy the woman who was calling for help, or rather the darkness that surrounded him. Did no one in this hospital believe in lights? One glance to make sure the nurses weren't looking and he slipped inside - red Converse brought him across the linoleum grade flooring as he approached the bed rigged with multiple beeping machines and oxygen tubes. This room didn't smell like death - it smelled like something else. Lavender? Vanilla? He couldn't seem to decide - but it was forgotten as he finally came up beside the bed. Looking down at the kindest blue eyes he had ever seen They almost glittered in the darkness, reflected full of those red and green mechanical signs of life. Her hair was long and smooth, spiraled through with gray - no, it was mostly gray.

"Hey … " Saito said as though he shouldn't have been there, but something about the way those blue eyes looked at his when she finally turned his direction, calmed him. She smiled, a weak smile that seemed to spread across her face slowly.

"Oh, I thought you were one of the nurses."

"Um, no. I heard you calling for someone and thought maybe - that you needed help." He was almost back stepping now, as if he had decided that being there wasn't a good idea. As if he should have just ignored her call and continued sitting in the dark room of his unconscious uncle. Taking a step back, he had a suggestion. "I can just leave and ask for one of the nurses."

"No!" She paused, and smiled. "No, that's alight. It'd be nice to have some company." She tried to struggle to sit a little higher in her bed, but couldn't seem to manage it completely. She looked at the boy and made some vague gesture for him to pull up a chair - she was ecstatic, having company. She didn't enjoy being alone, though she had been for so many years. Her memory of this city was filled with loneliness. No one would pay any mind to her stories - the generation that believed in demons, in powerful jewels and destructive swords had died some time ago, long before this boy stepping in to give her company.

Even the children who stopped by the shrine to do research projects, or were forced there by parents to "get in touch" with the ancestors who were supposed to be lurking - she would relate the tale of her adventures, of the shikon no tama. They would listen, then thank her and leave - polite as they had been raised, and her words forgotten. As the blonde boy pulled up a chair, his game having been shut off in a rare moment of silence, she smiled - she actually recognized his face as one of the many forced to her shrine by parents. "I'm Kagome." She began, a smile that stretched tired and longing - it read 'the end', but no one was literate in her expressions anymore. "I'm the head miko at the Higurashi shrine, it's not too far from here. You might know it."

"Yeah. My father says it's the oldest one left in Tokyo, we go there sometimes." He felt weird talking to this woman like he knew her, but he felt comfortable. "I'm Saito." Something about this moment said it was important, some unyielding weight rolled down his shoulders and made his small hands clutch closely together from where they rested on his lap. "My dad's favorite story is about the shikon no tama, he goes to your shrine to hear it all the time. Do you know it?"

"Oh, no one wants to hear that story anymore." She said, dismissive - but with his hesitant, somewhat eager nod, she thought. "Where to begin. This is the story of a girl who overcame time, and a … boy who was just overcome. The girl was from our time, but through the magic of a jewel known as the shikon no tama, she traveled back in time almost five hundred years, through an old well she found in her family's shrine. After a while of walking she found a boy with long white hair, and dog ears!

The nearby villagers told her he was a hanyou, and had been sealed by the late miko of the village for trying to steal the shikon no tama. But something about the boy called to the girl, it told her that she could trust him, that he wasn't the dangerous animal the village people tried to make him out to be." The old woman paused for a moment, thinking of the first time she had laid eyes upon Inuyasha, a faint smile was pulling across almost wrinkled lips, blue eyes dazzled with memory before she was reminded of the present moment. "He saved her, he'd never admit it, but it wasn't because of the jewel, or because he had something worse in store for the girl. It was because of his heart, it wouldn't let him, the same heart that would guide him through the rest of his life." Her eyes closed for a moment, wrinkled fingers extended and then closed, like she was trying to hold onto something

The words were coming easier now - they had some kind of flow to them that hadn't been there before, her head eased back against the pillow. This story - this life long tale seemed never ending when she had first experienced it. It felt like decades of her life had been used up and she would constantly be fighting to get them back. But when the words slipped past chapped, aged lips it seemed like only moments crossed those years. Her life was just a story now, a few minutes in someone's day that may or may not have been forgotten - it would never be written in a history book as fact, it would never be printed in her Obituary. She was Kagome Higurashi, average high school student, college drop out and one of the few mikos left in this nation without a past. But she felt something in her chest that would change all that -- this boy, this child. Something inside him was open, receptive, pulling - it coaxed the words out of her in a way that seemed based truly on her rekindled faith in humanity.

There were a few slips as she felt time finally catch up with her, five hundred years had been pulled through her veins without a moment passed. Each word was another year, each sentence a decade forgotten - the boy at her side perch at apt attention, not a sound or word out of him. He seemed to ignore every slip of "I" in place of the ominous "the girl", she couldn't fictionalize her life, it seemed to miss that formation and she was merely passing on some kind of legacy. Some kind of meaning to this young child, he understood - as only a child could. Adults were so set, so jaded and unmoving. They could never accept a word of magic and demons - where life hinged upon the retrieval and protection of a single slip of pink jewel. Her breath was slowly, growing shallow as she recited the words - coming toward the climax and sudden conclusion. A phantom hand gripping her heart with long forgotten tugs of grief and pain, but she was accepting of them now. She wasn't a young girl anymore, she understood death readily, she could feel the cold, dragging fingers of death slowly crawling up her body. She was growing so cold…

"What happened? What …" Saito seemed to draw in the conclusion that things were ending rapidly, that this could be the last moment he had with the old woman who had become something important to him - in the few hours he had been by her side. His light brown eyes were wide and he was scooting off his chair, wandering closer to the bed that was the home of a woman who could no longer take steps. His small hands were grappling at the video game that had been turned off since his backside hit the seat, it was slowly sliding from between fingers and dropping to the floor. She seemed to be having difficulty doing everything - small hand raised to clasp around the one closest to him. Fingers weaving into her own prominent knuckled fingers. He was smiling for her when those dulling blue eyes were turning to him, it was a sad smile - but his father told him he should never cry. Not when you lost someone truly important to you, celebrate them, mourn for them - be strong for them. But he saw the sadness in his father's eyes every time he dropped him off to sit by his uncle's side, who had been in a coma since before Saito had been borne - his father wanted to cry. He knew. But Kagome … he'd be strong for her. "It's okay, Kagome. I'm here."

"You're so sweet, Saito-kun. I'm just an old woman." She smiled for him, her eyes growing tired and were beginning to close…

"No! You're not _just_ an old woman, Kagome!" He exclaimed, his small hands holding her own up for her to see - as if she had just forgotten who she actually was under all that time-worn skin. All those years filing between the people rushing through the streets - leaving her footprints in pavement when it should have been pure earth under her. His eyes were filling with the tears he didn't want to fall - but somehow, they began to escape and trail silently down his cheeks. Dripping off his chin, he moved closer to the bed - bumping the side and leaning over so that he could really look her in the eyes. Maybe he was blurring some kind of reality, maybe he had invested too much in the story of heroics and battle - of an epic journey to actually do something. "You _saved_ the world from the evil hanyou, you battled demons all across Japan! You traveled through time. You're a hero, Kagome!"

"Saito…" Kagome's voice was quiet, but there was a spark of life that hadn't been there since she had held that perfect pink jewel in her hands. It's power flashing out in bursts and brushing against her dirt smudged and battle torn skin. She had smiled then, it had pulled across her lips so completely - but then she had looked up and her world had fallen apart… all that blood, twisted into his perfect white hair. He was cast aside on the ground, a casualty of war…

"…_Inu … yasha…"_

_The glow of victory was torn in two, her heart along with it - she had seen him injured before. She had seen his blood paint the ground so carelessly. But never this much, never as the glowing orange of day began to dip behind the casting line of the horizon. His crimson stained mane of white was slowly darkening - obsidian strands tangling into it, swallowing whatever lack of colour that was left after the blood. Dying those strands as dark as the cursed night that his demon blood left him - even if he had remained, even if it hadn't been the new moon. She didn't know if he would have lived, she didn't want to think about it - but it had been so much blood. Her trembling hands held that jewel that had ruined so many lives, had tormented so many souls in a search for power beyond all means. One step, she begged him to open his eyes … his name became a chant … "-- … Inuyasha … Inuyasha … INUYASHA!"_

_Dirt smudged shoes took her flying across the scarred battlefield, their allies pulling their battle damaged clothes close to their bodies as that pained voice ripped through the night. Tears pulling down her cheeks before she even reached his body - a weight settling on her chest. But it wasn't the pain of losing him - it was the pain of being taken from him. With each step she took, each inch she moved forward - it became more difficult. It was like she was trudging deeper into the water and he was on the opposite shore - she'd swim through the ocean. But it wasn't the bottomless sea that was swallowing her - it was time itself. It wanted her back now that her task was complete … it was pulling at her like phantom hands demanding her attention. Her own hands swatting at the air furiously as she ran, her voice yelling out her frustration - her desperation. She had to get to him, she had to save him - she could wish upon the jewel, she could ask for it to spare the unlikely savior's life …_

_.. But she never reached him._

_Her shoes were pulled from the ground -- pulled from this time, and cast back into her own. Those begging blue eyes were cast upon her fallen love. His hair dark with mortality, his violet eyes open to watch her go - she bade goodnight not to his hanyou gaze. But the human man he had been willing to be for love. The full-blooded brother stepped up beside him, those unlatching golden eyes looking down at him with something … she couldn't tell. She was calling out,_…_but they couldn't hear her, there was a drowning silence crushing her in that pulling darkness. People gathering around the hanyou turned man that she knew was dying. He couldn't survive, he would die without her - probably a long, painful death. The last image was Sesshoumaru's hand pulling free a sword …_

_And she was cast to the ground of her family's shrine, that small pink jewel bouncing across the ground like it was trying to escape the despair of the girl kneeling in the rain. Her obsidian strands soaked already and plastered to her face - where did the rain end and those tears start. Desperation had her clawing at the ground with dull, mortal nails - blood filling cracks as she scrapped her fingers of the cement - a inhuman howl of agony escaping completely human lips. Palms flat on the ground, she breathed heavily - her body slowly shutting down and she let her arms release her weight. Slumped to the ground in defeat … they had beaten Naraku, they had completed the jewel … why couldn't they be happy now. Dark hair veiled her vision, but in the gloomy darkness of the thunder-storm … that perfectly round pink jewel glittered just before her eyes. Sitting harmlessly on the ground …_

"… _Inuyasha."_

"Kagome?" Saito's voice broke her out of her memory and she turned moist eyes to him, the concern on her face made her want to wipe the tears rolling down his round cheeks. But she didn't have the energy anymore … she was slipping into the darkness again. Hand squeezing his, she smiled sadly at him.

"You need to know how the story ends." She waved off his shaking head, "Don't be silly, Saito-kun. How are you supposed to tell my story if you don't know how it ends?" She was ushering him back into his seat, which he pulled closer to her bed - that video game being pushed under the bed and forgotten. Those light brown eyes were all for the woman with the slowing heart beat on the bed - the winter sky had dipped into darkness some hour or two ago. The sky empty of a moon, and she wondered if Inuyasha had ever seen the sun again. Had he lived through the night long enough to see the sun? Or had he died a mortal man. Tears pulled from her eyes, but she was too tired to wipe at them - the emotional wounds were old and she wasn't going to fall apart, right at the end of the story.

"The boy and the girl had done it, completed the jewel and killed the evil hanyou. It was all over - the jewel was in the girl's hand and she knew that her hanyou would know the right thing to do with it. Because, you see - he wasn't ashamed to be a hanyou anymore. The girl loved him just how he was, and wouldn't want him to change." She smiled, so sad - so broken, but the words were still spilling from her lips. "But he hadn't made it, the battle had been too hard, it had broken the boy. The evil hanyou was defeated, but he had made sure no one would celebrate their victory. The boy laid on the ground, just as the sun left the sky and he became mortal for that one night - the night he died. He was the real hero, Saito. He died for the people he loved…"

Her hand was slowly lifting, her heart was dropping to a sluggish crawl across the monitor behind her - but she was determined to get whatever she sought. Withered old hands practically creaked as she pulled a chain from the collar of her hospital gown - it pulled out slowly, and then upon the end was a golf-ball sized jewel. Glowing a soft pink from where it touched Kagome's collar bone. Saito's eyes widened, he once again was moving from his seat, hands on the railing on the side of her bed. Light brown eyes glued to the jewel dangling in front of him. A quick yank had the chain breaking away from her thin neck and pooling on her chest. Kagome upturned one of Saito's hand and placed the Shikon no Tama in his small, capable hands. Forcing his fingers to close over it and hold it in his palm, "… He died for this Jewel. The shikon no tama. Take care of it, Saito."

"But, Kagome! I can't guard the jewel!" _I'm just a kid! His mouth was open, looking down at the pure little marble resting in his palms - it was warm. It was beautiful, he could feel the power pulsing from it - but, how was he supposed to guard the jewel. He wasn't a hero! He was just a boy. Just Saito. Swallowing he tried to offer the jewel back to Kagome, whose eyes were closing slowly - sinking into the comfort of her own mind, her own memories - while she slipped into the darkness. She knew if she opened her eyes, that the sky would hold no moon - she'd stare up at the same sky he had … but, it was brighter this night. All those city lights, all those city noises …_

"Yes, you can. I know you can - I pass on the duty of being the Guardian of the Shikon no Tama. To you." She was fading, her voice was soft, barely a whisper. Faces were pulled through her mind - her friends, her family. The lines that defined those two words had blurred so many years ago - her family had been extended to the group that she had risked her life with. Every bit her family as those bound to her by blood, by ancestry. She knew Saito was still at her side, everything was fading so quickly - but she opened her mouth once more. Her final words spilling from her mouth. "Goodbye, Saito-kun … Good luck …"

And with those words, Kagome Higurashi died.

Saito had to be forced from the room - nurses trying to bring the woman back to life, they tried to save her, but she didn't want to be saved. She was finally moving on, leaving her mortal shell behind and going on to someplace beyond. He stood in the hallway, that jewel clasped between both of his small hands - the chain had somehow repaired itself, but he couldn't move. Tears pouring from light brown eyes, staring into the room that housed his best friend - his hero. They were pulling a sheet over her head and shaking their heads - calling time of death.

There was nothing they could do, she hadn't the will to fight to live anymore. Someone was asking him if he wanted to call someone to come pick him up, his head was nodding but he didn't remember the conversation - his father had answered and said he would come by to pick him up in ten minutes. Walking through the halls to the lobby, it was like everything around him was swimming - there was a new weight of responsibility on his shoulders. A new appreciation for family and friends - Kagome had lost everything, and still. She had moved on - he wouldn't lose anyone if he could prevent it.

Waiting outside, a dark-blue Honda Civic with tinted windows pulled up in front of him, and he knew his father had arrived. He had been getting the same car for years, leasing them every two years - he seemed to remember that he had to actually walk to the car and open the door. Sitting in his seat, he didn't even look at his father while he buckled his seatbelt. His red Converse encased feet were suspended in the air while he stared down at the pink jewel hidden in his hands. There was silence while they began driving back to their house, where the walls would be filled with family portraits - but he had always ignored them. Favouring his big screen television, and Playstation three - but when he got home tonight, he would look at them - he would spend the time with the people who weren't here anymore. He would ask his father their stories - he didn't want to ignore them anymore. His father's voice through the thickening silence - calm, as it always was. His father was so strong, but with such sad eyes. "Is everything okay, Saito? How is your uncle?"

"Uncle Inuyasha's fine, dad." He said, looking at his father - who didn't look back because he was driving. His chin lifted slightly and he opened his mouth again - something made him want to relay Kagome's existence. To make sure he wasn't the only one who would know her name; was that selfish? To not want to be alone."I made a friend today, her name is…-was Kagoma."

"Kagome…" The name was spoken with such reverence, and a small curl of pale lips was displayed as those eyes remained on the road. Golden eyes turned to the boy in the passenger seat when the car rolled to a stop at a stop sign. Sesshoumaru regarded his hanyou son, eyes only drifting to the hidden jewel clasped in his son's hand. His boy had learned something; he would grow up to be a respectful man, like his uncle who hadn't woken up since that night upon the battlefield. Tenseiga had given him life, but his eyes had never opened - his dark hair had never lightened, his hanyou blood never returned. He was trapped in a eternal sleep. He had thrusted the future of his son in the hands of a dying human woman, he had forced that upon her - his guilt seemed to amass, it seemed to flourish once more inside his chest. Exhaling a sigh, a sadness filling amber eyes while he turned back to look at the road. Driving them home again, a faint dance of magenta stripes upon his cheeks. Sesshoumaru, taiyoukai of the western lands, lived in a modest two story house, drove a Honda Civic and was raising his son to be a good man. Time changes everyone, people change everyone. A certain miko entrusted with a powerful jewel had changed him so many years ago.

When they reached their home, Saito slipped out of the car without another word, but he was sluggish. Stepping out of the car, and tipping a regal chin upward, he didn't seem astonished or shocked. It seemed only right that she would finally pass when the moon was absent for her farewell. The new moon had failed to steal everything that was that young hanyou, so many years ago - it seemed only right it stole his soul mate. He should have loathed the dark sky, but it had finally given Kagome Higurashi the peace she deserved. His words fell from unmoving lips, like they had never been spoken at all…

"Goodbye, imouta."


End file.
